From the beginning, it became clear that Kanbanize would need more than just cool perks and a nice office to build a dream team equipped to deal with the challenges of a growing startup. A productive and healthy company culture is not something that will happen on its own—you have to build it. Negative culture, though, somehow does evolve on its own, often as a result of disengaged management or a lack of effort toward nurturing a good working environment. Of course, even if you have the best of intentions there will be mistakes and poor decisions. Your job is to not let them drag you down. Act fast and fix what you can.

A quintessential part of the growth and success of Kanbanize was, and still is, our internal culture. Our culture philosophies are value-centered, with attention paid to efficiency and effectiveness. We’re all about promoting continuous improvement by nurturing personal responsibility and mutual support within our team. We’ve learned many hard lessons, and from them we’re able to put together what we believe makes our company a great place to work better, build better, and deliver faster.

1. Live what you preach and don’t compromise your values.

From day one, Kanbanize followed the principles of Lean methodology and Kanban in all of our departments. Every employee actively applies these lean values and the product we develop in all of their work. We don’t just preach and pitch Kanbanize to others, we live it every day.

Based on the combination of the five principles of Lean and the visual nature of a Kanban board with its cards and just-in-time delivery principles, we’ve managed to establish a consistent, reliable, and efficient flow of work across the organization. We admit that we are far from perfect, but we believe perfection is in the process, not the destination.